COVID-19 Testing at Penn

Reopening Penn safely through 100% student biweekly testing.

Suhita Kodali , Mariana Luna , Vishesh Shah , Daniel Wang
2021-05-08

Problem Statement

Our decision problem focuses on how we can improve COVID-testing policies at Penn to get 100% of the student body tested twice a week. Not all students fully participate in testing at Penn despite it being available for free, and we wanted to find out why. This is important because Penn’s COVID recovery directly impacts the local Philadelphia community both health-wise and economically, and proper adherence to COVID-testing is key to opening campus back up safely.

User Personas

Persona 1

Persona 2

Persona 3

Conversation Starters

  1. How often do you get tested?
  2. How would you rate the testing appointment scheduling experience in terms of usability?
  3. Do you think the consequences for violating Penn’s Covid Student Campus Compact are too light? Too severe?
  4. How often do you complete PennOpen Pass and why?
  5. Have you ever tested positive for COVID?

User Interviews

Interview 1: COVID-Aware Penn Junior

Insights

Interview 2: COVID-Skeptic Penn Sophomore

Insights

Interview 3: COVID-Aware Penn Senior

Insights

Interview 4: Penn Admin

Learnings from the User Interviews

Learning 1

Learning 2

Learning 3

Learning 4

Storyboarding a Solution

Frame 1

Frame 2

In this second frame, we show how Amit forgot his Wednesday appointment. - Luckily, with our new solution implemented, he got a text reminder that lets him know that he missed his appointment - This text reminder also gives him an easy linke to reschedule - Amit thinks he still has to wait until Saturday for his next appointment per Penn’s initial covid testing schedule for undergraduates.

Frame 3

Frame 4

Frame 5

Frame 6: Value Creation

Amit goes to get tested the very next day keeping himself and the rest of campus safer. With all the new policies which make testing more accesible, Amit continues to get tested regularly for the rest of the semester.

Next Steps

If we pursue the project further, the next step would be to reach back out to the Penn Covid Task Force and ask for a sit-down with them to understand the challenges they face as well as to potentially propose a few of our solutions.

To go a step further, we thought of building an all-in-one app that keeps track of everything COVID-related: testing appointments, results, open pass, and eventually COVID vaccination records. Additionally, we can incorporate a gameified and social component within the app in order to incentivize students to get tested regularly.